I'm using NetBSD for few years now but I've never took time to upgrade the system to a new version. To remember what I did for the upgrade, I've collected below the main steps.

Setup

The system upgrade can be made from the running NetBSD system by using the sysupgrade tool. I have installed the tool by using:

sudo pkgin install sysupgrade

Edit the file /usr/pkg/etc/sysupgrade.conf and setup the RELEASEDIR to point to the new release:

RELEASEDIR="ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-6.1.4/$(uname -m)"

NetBSD upgrade

Now, we just have to run the sysupgrade command to upgrade the base system and NetBSD kernel and then upgrade the packages by using the pkgin command.

sudo sysupgrade auto
sudo pkgin upgrade
sudo pkgin full-upgrade

And after the upgrade reboot the new kernel:

sudo shutdown -r now